Cities of Ice and Fire
by terafonne
Summary: In a universe where cities come to life and play the game of thrones for themselves, Principalities burn, old castles come to life to fight the shadows of the north, and Lost Cities will drag you down with them. Valar morghulis; they are not men but they will die all the same.


Winterfell is still a child, for her storms rage strong across the cold land, and her children build well but close and small. Her land expands not much further than the castle walls which were never the same grandiose towers as King's Landing in the south. She may be underestimated in size and strength but she has as sharp a mind as any of her brothers and sisters.

She is a child of ebony hair constantly flecked with snow and eyes the color of pale winter blue. If she tiptoes, the crown of her head can match the height of Ice. She is a child, but she is a City, and they do not age the same. She has grown since the children of the forest found her beneath the weirwood, hardly more than a babe. She has learned since the First Men came and took her from home beneath the pines (they took her, but they cannot tame her, oh no, not the daughter of winter. They dare not cut her godswoods down even as krakens learn to walk the earth), and the Andals after them with crystals and new gods (not in _my_ north!) and steel, and even after the Targaryens and their words of Fire and Blood.

Winterfell serves the Starks as they served her, and each in their own time are entombed in the hollows of her bones. They take pride in their child-City, they know not to underestimate her, as she has learned the same for them. For all their age, they are her children, and she protects them. But even she is not omnipotent. Her children have fallen to harm before. Brandon the Shipwright who left her walls and sailed into Sunset Sea, nevermore seen. The deaths of the leaders mark the crypts, etched into her ribs. The deaths of unknown leave their own shadows. Their blood paints her skin, rashed with fires, tattooed with winding pale almost-shadows (she rubs her near translucent skin in the dark of night and tries not to remember the Others; but not remembering is not the same as forgetting, and she doesn't, no, Winterfell is daughter of winter and grandchild of the old gods, she does not forget the Long Night, even as magic drains out of the world and danger fades from view.).

It is not until the children of Casterly Rock enter her that her children are harmed within her walls. The southron king calls for her presence and she ought by all rights deny this drunk oaf, he is nothing to her.

"Please, for me, he is like a brother," begs Eddard Stark, so she relents (but only for godswoods and the plains and the lands outside her walls).

She feels the invasion immediately, splashed blatantly across her skin the way Jaime Lannister's seed spurts on her walls (do they think she cannot feel it, do they take her a child, how dare). And she presses her lips together, thin and nauseous. She feels a tickling along her spine just then, and she knows what is going to happen, she can feel it as surely as Brandon Stark's feet climbing her ruins. She shakes her head, but that doesn't stop it, can't prevent it - she is too far away, no, oh no, and she screams (_the things I do for love_) and scares off their prey so everyone's looking at her. She can't see that though, her eyes are his: big and wide and terrified as the ledge hurtles away; her ears are his: he can't hear his own screams, only the whistling of air passing him by; her body is his as she feels bones meet ground with horrific smack, as she feels shards of bone grind against each other, twisting and digging further into the flesh.

Winterfell returns sharply, jerks her horse around, and rides, hard, for home. She can feel each and every person within her holdings since Brandon the Builder raised her walls, the other daily dozens of deaths that she numbs herself from but a Stark always has cut across every boundary. Ned knows this, and she can feel his fear chasing her back as he follows on his own steed.

But she's a City after all and by the time she is actually there through the Hunter's Gate and off her panting foaming courser she knows Bran will survive, and she knows needs to be alone or she will redecorate Casterly Rock, he and his gold-flecked curses come to ruin her, in blood and snow and ice.

Because a City is not responsible for it's humans actions.

Winterfell says this to herself as the stones rearrange themselves around her pattering feet, leading down in a tunnel that shifts back after she passes until she is in the crypts of her children long gone, curled up and shivering. When she comes out again the birds will have flown and the caravan will have ridden. When she comes out again it will not be to tell the Starks who hurt Bran, because they will have known. When Winterfell walks out of the crypts letters will be exchanged and correspondence between the Cities will fly on dark wings.

Winter is coming, and with it dark tidings.

* * *

Notes: Inspired by thecitysmith's Paris Burning (go, go read; it's amazing!) I began to create a similar universe for asoiaf. The worlds are different by necessity and also because I am not one to plagiarize. There is a blog for this: castellanofvalyria on tumblr. I put fun facts, character sketches, drafts, etc. on there.


End file.
